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Brian Copeland's
Core Fitness Newsletter

Issue #8 - 7/20/2007

1. Lessons On Life: "Stress, The Good, Bad And The Ugly"
2. Training Tip: "Kettlebell WTH Effect!"
3. Nutrition Tip: "Brian's Peanut Chicken Delight"
4. ABC Fitness & Yoga News: "In The News"
5. Personalized Program Design: "Tired of Not Reaching Your Goals?"
6. Charity in Focus: "Precious Ones Outreach International"

1. Lessons On Life: "Stress, The Good, Bad And The Ugly"

Let's talk about a favorite (make that least favorite) subject of mine; stress. It is an inevitable fact of life.

Stress is unofficially the leading cause of disease and poor health in the world. Stress has been linked to everything from hypertension to headaches to heart attacks to high blood pressure, etc, etc.

Stress comes in many forms. Unhappy marriages. Lame jobs. Lame bosses. High debt/poor finances. Kids. Parents. Neighbors. Terrorists. Man eating lions, etc.

What is less commonly known are other problems that stress can cause, other forms of stress and how to avoid or lower stress. I'll address all of these briefly.

What are some other problems caused by stress?

• Decreased Testosterone Levels
Why should you care?
Testosterone is the "feel good" hormone. If you have too little you walk around in a gloomy mood. You also become an "I can't" type of person. It also affects your sex drive. If any of you married people haven't had sex (with each other please this is a family show) in a long time it is either because you hate each other or you have low testosterone. Actually even if I didn't like my wife I would still want to have sex with her so it is probably low testosterone.

And YES women this goes for you too. Testosterone is a vitally important hormone found in both men and women and while men tend to have higher levels naturally you don't want to do anything to lower them.

Normal testosterone levels can be associated with lean successful happy people. Abnormally high levels of testosterone such as in people who do way too many steroids can certainly cause rage and other emotions but we aren't talking about steroid users here, we are talking about your body's own natural levels of testosterone.

Keep it high or suffer mental and physical health problems!

• Increased Estrogen Levels
But isn't this good for women?
NO! High levels of estrogen lead to depression, low energy and mood swings. Oh and did I mention estrogen is a hormone that loves to store fat on you?

Estrogen is the opposite of testosterone for the most part. Sure everyone has it (men and women) and everyone needs a natural level. But we don't want anything to cause an increase in it.

• Decreased Immune System
Stress causes your immune system to work overtime. Too much stress and your immune system breaks down. I used to be a workaholic and piled tons of stress on myself daily. I was sick constantly and felt like poop!

One day I decided I was leaving the office at a decent time and that I wouldn't sweat the small stuff... and everything is small stuff. From that day on I haven't been truly sick one single time. That was about 3 years ago.

• Lack of Progress In Your Training
Now here is an interesting one for you. You see to the body stress is stress. Whether that be from a mean boss, running late for work, being around sick people and your body having to fight viruses, being chased by a man eating lion or even exercising too much.

All of these things the body must spend energy to recover from. All of these things cause a hormone called cortisol to rise. Cortisol is a survival hormone that breaks down muscle and stores energy as fat. It increases blood pressure, blood sugar levels and has an immunosuppressive action. Like all hormones we need a natural level of it but too much and it eats our hard earned muscle and piles on body fat, especially around the midsection research tells us.

The body has limited recuperative abilities. As you sleep (quality and quantity count here) your body can refill it's tank of recuperation so you can face another day. But if you spend all of the tank and then try to exercise your body won't have what it needs to recover. Pile tons of cortisol on top of that from a stressful day and you are going nowhere fast.

Now you can still exercise during stressful periods of life but you must scale back and be smart about it. This is no time to "push yourself".

What are some things that I can do to avoid stress?

How many of you like your jobs? How many of you like your boss? How many of you HATE your job or your boss?

Look, life isn't a non-stop happy-fest and some days you may not feel like going to work. This isn't what I'm talking about. If you HATE your job or your boss then why the hell are you still working there?

Quit, and tell them everything you have every wanted to on the way out!

That is stressful you say... If you are smart with money you have saved up several month's living expenses for rainy days so quitting and looking for another job shouldn't be an issue.

Which leads me to my next topic. MONEY!!!

Do you realize that the number one reason for stress in marriage and the number 1 reason for divorce is money?

People WAKE UP! If you don't have it, don't spend it. In the book "The Richest Man in Babylon" by George S. Clason, the author says to put 10% of each paycheck into savings FIRST, before paying bills. He also says not to waste the money, so get on some kind of a budget. You would be amazed at where your money goes. Eating out for lunch every day? Do the math, that's a lot of money. If anyone says they can't afford my training services they really don't know how much money they throw away on unhealthy junk that brings them momentary pleasure instead of the gift of fitness they could be giving themselves.

Avoid stressful people in your life whenever possible. Do you have friends that bring you down? Tell them to change or kick them to the curb. Tough love baby! Sorry for them but you only get one life and you shouldn't be obligated to suffer just because they want someone to suffer with them. For the record I'm not talking about someone battling cancer here; I'm talking about negative drama queens that bring ruin unto themselves.

Quit making a big deal about things. You can be too careless in life which seems free and fun but can lead to money problems that cause stress. You can also be too cautious in life and never have any fun or take any chances because of fear. An example of that is my family. There are many in my family that freaked out when I originally started my business. "But what if it doesn't work?" "What happens if you don't make enough money?" "But what if the sky falls down?" OHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Give me a break. It is going great by the way but if it hadn't then what would I do? Just go get another job. Wow, disgustingly simple huh? What was there to worry about?

Summary:

• Stress causes tons of health problems, even diseases
• Stress shoots your training progress in the foot
• Being dumb with money is the number 1 cause of stress
• Lame jobs and lame bosses are probably number 2
• Worrying too much about things is probably number 3
(you can tell I 'probably' did some high level research to come up with my data huh?)

Solutions:
1. Quit your job, find another one.
2. Keep trying new ones until you find what you like.
3. Save money. Money in the bank means no fear of telling your boss they suck!
4. Get religious! Seriously, knowing that there is something out there smarter and more powerful than me guiding my path helps me to not worry about messing things up for myself.
5. Quit caring about stupid things that aren't important.
6. Drop the negative drama queen friends who cause stress in your life.
7. Take time to have fun and relax. Quit being a workaholic.
8. Purchase my Personalized Program Design or attend kettlebell training at my studio. Sure I'm biased, I happen to think I rock, so do all of my clients. In my Personalized Program Design I take into account things like the amount of stress in your life when I design your training program. This ensures you don't "shoot yourself in the foot" by exceeding your ability to recover and progress in your training.

Friends you only get one life and when you are on your death bed you won't wish you worked more, you will wish you lived more!

2. Training Tip: "Kettlebell WTH Effect!"

In the world of kettlebell lifting we have what we call the WTH Effect (What the Heck?!?!)

The WTH?!?! exclamation comes because of an unexpected benefit we receive as a result of training with kettlebells, this is because we weren't specifically training to receive this benefit. Now usually this unexpected benefit is explainable such as increasing the range of motion in a joint or improving strength, etc. But sometimes we just don't know why or how but we are happy none the less.

If you are sitting on the fence of deciding to lift kettlebells or not then read the following section.

I'll give you some examples:

• Myself, several of my clients and several credible Chiropractors originally took up kettlebell lifting in order to get in awesome shape. What many of us did not expect was that while we all suffered from mild to severe lower back pain; we all eliminated our back pain by swinging these crazy iron balls around! I lived with back pain for 6-7 years and it was gone in only 6 months of kettlebell training! WTH?!?!

• I have worked with several clients and friends including a yoga instructor who suffered from knee pain. Not trying to fix their problem but rather trying to avoid injuring the area and still give them a great workout I put them on a diet of kettlebell swings... All of a sudden their knee pain disappeared! WTH?!?!

• The former Soviet Union conducted experiments with it's military to discover what was the best form of training. The soldiers were tested on a standard battery of military drills such as a long distance run, maximum # of pullups and pushups and the standing long jump. Basically endurance, strength endurance and power output. One group trained using all of those exercises, another group trained using conventional weightlifting and the third group trained using the standard kettlebell lifts. In the end the group that performed the best was not the group that actually practiced the specific events but the group that trained with kettlebells! WTH?!?!

• I don't have permission to use any names but I have read about several national top level powerlifters who substituted their normal deadlifting for heavy kettlebell swings and increased their deadlift by a significant amount. In one instance over 100 lbs. Now anyone who knows anything about experienced strength athletes knows that at a high level increasing a lift by 20 lbs in a year's time is very hard. But to increase by 100 lbs! WTH?!?!

• I am certainly no big huge bodybuilder nor a member of the Power Team. But I surprised the heck out of myself one day when inspired by Brett Jones, Senior Russian Kettlebell Instructor, I decided to try tearing a deck of cards. I did! No tricks. I tore 56 cards (full deck with 4 jokers) in half! WTH?!?!

Now sure there are plenty of other great things I could say about kettlebells such as how much weight my clients lose or how much strength they gain or even how much their co-workers compliment their new bodies but these are what they were trying to accomplish, not WTH effects.

Now frankly, I can explain all of the WTH?!?! effects above with cold hard scientific facts. But let's leave some magic in the world huh?

All of you fence-sitters, sit no more! Throw that leg over and come see me to learn kettlebells!!!

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